To prepare students for the change society undergoes, education needs to continue shifting from knowledge transfer to competence transfer. To achieve this, we as teachers should have a learning centered view rather than a teaching centered view. Each student has his or her own way of learning — therefore we need to be creative and reflective about how best to help students become learning experts. I aim to generate a learning environment that provides the best opportunities for students to acquire new skills on their own, but with appropriate guidance. I believe such a stimulating learning environment is best achieved by personal interactions among students and teachers, and project-oriented teaching provides in my view exquisite opportunities for such interactions. However, the diversity of ways of learning requires a synergistic complementation by excellent and ever-expanding digital resources and in such way, students are empowered and prepared to respond to the dynamic professional landscape they are faced with.
In my opinion, the attraction of an academic job lies in the lifelong learning experience and sharing this enthusiasm with students. The easiest way to infect students with this enthusiasm — if they are not already infected — is to confront them as early as possible with the frontiers of science. Creating such a stimulating learning environment is motivating for both the student and I as teacher. It fosters free critical thinking, encourages student interactivity, and make them transfer skills and knowledge to each other — more importantly, to acquire and transfer methods of learning. Observing the learning process of students opens the door for constant improvement in learning opportunities. Placing the topic around the forefront of science avoids one of the central problems with a knowledge-transfer focused approach — the problem of students reciting knowledge without integration and understanding concepts. Current scientific discussions and scientific reasoning cannot be understood and followed without an understanding of the underlying concepts.
I strongly believe in an integrative way of learning that requires students to link concepts across fields, and that fosters analytical thinking. Unfortunately, much education is structured around isolated topics — a class about learning to program, a class for statistics, a class for scientific writing, and classes for specific subject matters in biology. Project-centered learning promotes integrated learning by illustrating how challenges can best be overcome by an integration of diverse subjects, be they technical or covering specific biological content. Such project-oriented teaching also motivates students to approach topics that they might view with some reluctance, because the motivation is coming from the student’s desire to succeed in the project, and their curiosity about the outcome. Particularly when doing team projects, students cannot avoid teaching and learning from each other. The most important aspect is that students take over primary responsibility for their projects, and in doing so automatically take over responsibility for their learning — a prerequisite for them to become learning experts.
I believe each student has their own specific way of learning, and therefore it is crucial to provide diverse materials and approaches that the student can choose among to develop their own preferred approach to learning. The diversity of material is for instance reflected in having incorporated into my teaching concepts of gamification of learning (e.g. a statistics game on formulating models and associated hypotheses), interactive e-learning (e.g. having students annotate primary scientific literature), and digital storytelling (e.g. having students produce small videos for their peers). For some students, classical reading material and lectures might be the best and preferred way of learning, but these students usually have plenty of opportunities and material to select from. Many students might simply be used to and expect these classical forms of teaching, but in my experience these forms are often less engaging and activating compared to, for instance, flipping the classroom concept, and classical forms of teaching might not always achieve the deep learning experience I envision.
One component of the applied biostatistics course I taught at SDU, was a small project where students produced small videos for their peers. During these projects students were forced to reflect on the way they gained understanding about a specific topic, and because their learning experience on the topic is fresh (compared to that of teacher), they have an advantage in identifying the crucial aspect that helped them gain understanding. Producing these videos not only forces students to reflect on how and why they learned, but also raises their confidence in their own learning ability and illustrates to them how they progress towards expertise in learning. Students frequently report that the initial little daunting feeling of producing a video about a statistical topic transformed into a fun learning experience and encouraged them to approach more learning challenges. Such moments are obviously also motivating for me as a teacher — it is highly rewarding to know that I can create an environment in which a biology student ends up telling me that a sometimes unpopular and difficult subject like statistics can be fun to learn.